I was hanging out at an internet chatroom listening to the latest buzz on the internet and the name “Magibon” came up.

Like iJustine (aka Justine Ezarik), Magibon is a young American woman whose videos on YouTube have generated quite a bit of interest, especially in Japan.

Here’s one of them:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=kib05Ip6GSo[/youtube]

With 3.3 million views, it’s a little difficult to fathom the appeal where a young girl looks back at you for all of 30 seconds to about 4 minutes.

BUT the fact is that some of her videos have garnered between 1 million to 3 million views, she’s also appeared in a recent issue of Japan’s Playboy magazine (a non-nude pictorial) and been featured on a Japanese internet TV station GYAO.

You can check out Magibon’s wikipedia entry.

I think her appeal has to do with the fact that she looks like a Japanese schoolgirl or anime character (maybe both), and appeals to the techie/net-savvy/Japanese manga-anime reading/watching audience.

And she’s a partner of the YouTube partner program too.

What do we learn from this?

The fact that she’s being discussed in internet chatrooms suggests that rich media beyond text is being actively discussed in chatrooms. Subtle content is hammering its way onto YouTube viewers (especially in the tween/teen demographic), more so than overt content-based ads.

Is Magibon being sponsored by a skin whitening or skincare company? If not, it’ll just be a matter of time.

Video literally gives “face time” to everyday spokespersons (think of the Benetton or Dove print ads given the video treatment).

One way innovative marketers have bounced off the successful platform of video broadcasters like Magibon has been to (more…)

• Video Marketing
• 4 Comments

Until now, there’d not been many ways to make money by posting videos online.

Kelvin Hui’s Ambatch.com provided an opportunity for users to embed links to video content services, in exchange for 100% of the adsense revenue. The original video portal is no longer available, although several new sub-portals have been launched.

I’d tried that for a time, although it seemed like the majority of the users were based in Asia and the bulk of users were on the Chinese language interface. English content posters seemed to be in the minority.

Enter MetaCafe, a video content hosting and publishing platform which rewards users for posting original content.

To date, some of the content publishers have done very well:

Lest you think the accrued figure as impossible to achieve, look at (more…)

• Internet Marketing
• 73 Comments

Counterstrike, Painkiller, Battlefield 2, Half-Life, Quake, Guild Wars fans rejoice!

High-end gaming peripheral manufacturer Razer USA Ltd just announced today at Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, a joint effort with Microsoft Hardware to design and develop next-generation computer gaming peripherals.

This is a major coup for Razer, long a cult hit for professional gamers who choose Razer’s high-end gaming peripherals. Razer has taken the leading in sponsoring several professional gaming tournaments in the Republic.
They’ve jointly introduced a new gaming mouse, the Microsoft Habu.

“We are thrilled to partner with Microsoft to combine form and function in order to deliver the best gaming products possible,” said Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff, president of Razer. “The Hardware Group stands out when it comes to comfort and design — and when we combine that with our years of experience in gaming power and precision, we will truly elevate the quality and overall gaming experience for our customers.”

“By partnering with Razer, we are building on our own legacy of developing innovative hardware solutions while taking advantage of Razer’s expertise in providing smart technology that elevates the PC gaming experience,” said Bill Jukes, product marketing manager for Microsoft Hardware at Microsoft. “We believe that Microsoft Habu specifically addresses the demands of today’s PC gamers, and its versatility, comfort and performance will benefit gamers of every genre.”

For more information, check out Razerguy’s blog: Razerguy on Form Meets Function

To look at the viral marketing elements of their campaign, check out http://www.notfornoobs.com

• business 2.0, Internet Marketing, viral marketing
• 1 Comment

Credit to Gwen for pointing this site out on her site: GwendolynTan.com.

Let’s look at the elements of this site:

• An intriguing story

Jose’s friends moved to Seattle and did not have a job. Although they managed to get housing, they didn’t have furniture. They decided to built furniture using Federal Express shipping boxes.

Some time later, Jose moved to Arizona and faced the same problem. He decided to follow their example building his own furniture, which now includes:

• desk
• bed
• couch
• dining table
• chairs

Whether you’re curious about how they did it, or just wondering if they’re plain crazy, you’ll be drawn to their site.

How sticky is their site?

Very. Even though they don’t have a technorati account, there are 91 links to their fedexfurniture.com. (now 92 after counting this post!)

Their Google PageRank (PR) is a mighty 6. (anything above a 4 means the Google Spiders crawl your site very regularly). Their Alexa ranking is also a respectable 439,637 (as of Aug 19,2006).

What helps is that lots of traffic has been generated from links from several high authority sources like:

• Digg
• Livedoor (a large Japanese portal)
• USA Today
• Wired
• TechCrunch
• Boing Boing
• The Seattle Times

Controversy, controversy

The biggest element of their publicity likely has been the frenzy whipped up by FedDex. Look at the legal letters they’ve sent to poor Jose.

It’s better publicity than anything you could buy at Google AdWords.

Where’s the money?

To monetize their traffic, Jose and company could consider revenue streams such as:

• Google Adsense
• Leveraging off their PR ranking to sell backlinks to other sites
• Affiliate marketing to monetize their incoming traffic
• Do promotions for other companies like furniture or deliveries companies (can you imagine UPS or Ikea advertising on their site?)

• Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing case study
• 1 Comment